Pattaya Life

If I am being honest, I did nothing of any significance in Pattaya. This is nothing I feel bad for, as I had sort of planned on using Pattaya as a place to rest and say goodbye to Asia, but it makes for boring blog posts. Basically, every day I did this, or some other variation with remarkable similarity:

10am- Wake up in total darkness courtesy of wooden shutters. Turn on light and remember I am in the shittiest hotel on earth. Listen to maids talking in Thai.

11- Walk outside past the lady who glares at me for not leaving my key with her. Realizing they probably have an extra my money is in the nastiest smelling sock on earth. Camera is behind the fridge covered in boxer shorts.

The walk basically consists of me walking past a few markets, drunks, a million foreigners and Thai on scooters, dillapitated stores and stands selling durian fruit. The heat is strong and the broken assfault magnifies it. There is the occasional palm tree and street side offering shrine with smoking incense and orange Fanta.

When I get to Walking Street, which is parallel and closest to the water things get interesting. Imagine a boardwalk anywhere with restaurants, activities, bars, and men soliciting Jesus or Blink’s Fry Dough. The decorations are loud and tacky and the place is full of trash, and disgarded food. Street food is prevalent.

The difference between Walking Street and, say, the Hampton Beach boardwalk, is that the restaurants are full of prostitutes on break, the activities involve prostitutes and various themes, the bars are basically show rooms for prostitutes, and the solicitors are advertising prostitutes, or at least a bar that has prostitutes.

12pm- Eat lunch at one of the little alcove restaurants. Listen to old American and British men laugh with their Thai “girlfriends.

12:30- Buy a bottle of fresh mandarin juice for maybe 50 cents. They are ice cold and probably one of the best things about Pattaya.

1:30- Rent a chair and umbrella at the beach. Wave away women selling fruit from their head, men selling sunglasses, children selling bracelets, so on and so forth. Go swimming. Catch hepatitis as soon as I go in the water. Apparently there are two beaches in Pattaya and I picked the bad one. Watch as a man from Africa who is sitting next to me has no will power and proceeds to buy EVERYING that is offered to him. At one point he had a few vendors lined up.

4- Walk back to the hotel. Watch the news or advertisements for beer bars and go-go bars. There is a channel dedicated to expats in Pattaya. While most of the expats I have seen in Pattaya creep me out, I am aware that I am in an area that exists basically only for the sex industry and that most of the people I see are NOT actually living here and are a poor representative of the community. The man on the show is interviewing owners of German, Mexican, Indian restaurants. There was some functioning celebrating the royal wedding.

6- Walk back through Walking Street. By now a few girls populate every small bar. Many of these bars are open air. One enormous bar actually spins. There are usually a few ladyboys there. Men are now outside promoting and being obnoxious and aggressive. Walk all the way to the end of the main drag. Be accosted every couple of feet by young guys trying to sell me suits, Zippos, brass knuckles with a taser at the business end, knives, sex, everything. Buy and drink half a dozen orange juices.

7- Eat dinner at a different restaurant than lunch despite that almost every restaurant offers the same fare of Thai / American / British / German / Russian. These same places existed also in Saigon and Cambodia. They are awesome in that they serve a little of everything. Once, I thought “what the hell” and got a burger that ended up being a round piece of meatloaf on soggy bread.

8- Walk along the beach past pimps and girls working solo. The general atmosphere of this place weirds me out. Even if prostitution is legal here these girls sitting under trees make me way more uncomfortable than the ones in the bars. Still, sometimes they call me sexy , even if they look at me funny when I say “why thank you!” and walk on.

10- Walk down Walking Street again and see the last of the few families that made the same mistake as me and thought Pattaya was a “normal” place getting the hell outta dodge. Watch the general fiasco as the giant halls full of small square bars fill up with men and girls and ladyboys. The prostitutes on Main-South in Worcester got nothing on the girls of Pattaya.

11: Walk through the tent markets and eateries around the area near my hotel.

11:30- Get drunk while watching the news.

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Going to the @*$&@(@ng beach

So, I'll count the past few weeks as a hiatus.  I was running late anyway but then a week or so ago my Gramma passed away very unexpectedly.  It was one of those things that makes you realize life at home continues even when you are so far away having this crazy experience.  It's sort of hard to deal with that sort of thing when you can't be there so I dropped off the face of the earth.  Without further ado:



Sometimes travel, like the life it represents, is a complete and spectacular disaster. The trip to Dacheon Beach in on the western shores of peninsula was, and I reiterate, a disaster with a high casualty rate.


It started at 9am on a Saturday, an hour few people ever claim to see in Korea. I met my neighbor Amanda R. outside of our lovely apartment building (my provided fridge ceased to function about a month ago, I have cockroaches, and my toilet is emitting a steady spew of water onto my bathroom floor). A short taxi ride took us to the other side of the river in Cheongju where we met up with Tim and learned that the tiny satellite bus terminal did NOT offer a way to the city of Daejeon.

Daejeon, while not being our final destination, serves as a hub of this general neighborhood. From Daejeon, a bus would take us to Boryeong and another would take us to a splendid hot summer day on a sandy beach. Being that the way to Boryeong from Daejeon was made only hourly and we had already lost some time, we took a cab from the little terminal (I want to say it was called Bukbo, but I have been getting the terminal name confused with a Bill Cosby skit recently so who knows) all the way to the grand monstrosity on the other side of the city.

A half hour or so later we were on a bus heading to Daejeon to meet up with Andrew and Amanda C. We would be getting to Dacheon Beach a little later than we all had hoped with a 2 hour ride from Daejeon to Dacheon but there would still be hours and hours of fun and swimming to look forward to.

Things started going south as the bus pulled off the highway and into the main drag of Daejeon. Amanda, who sat in the seat opposite Tim and I had been minding her own business when the sleeping Korean guy behind her exploded. It sounded at first like somebody springing awake after unexpectedly dosing but was followed then by the unmistakable sound of someone shotgun-barfing into their hand and a sick splattering sort of sound. This was followed by the smell of tomatoes and a look of sheer terror on Amanda’s face and shock on those of everybody else’s.

In hindsight, maybe this would have been the appropriate moment to get off of that bus and straight into another that would take us home, but we went on. It seems that if one believes in omens and such that somebody almost hurling on you pre-10am might be a good indication to get on home.

We met up with the others and were soon on a bus headed to Boryeong with a handful of Brits sitting a few rows behind us. In all likelihood, the only place to which any foreigners on that bus were going to was Dacheon Beach and it is always nice to have reassurance that you are at least on the right damned bus.

We drove on for a long time. It seemed clear already that our chosen route to the Beach probably would be taking a bit more than 2 hours. Still, bus rides are always nice in a foreign country with a unique landscape.

After a handful of stops, some eavesdropping and shared information as to where exactly our stop was we exited the bus in a combined wave of two groups of foreigners.

My mother has always said that Brandon (my adventure friend, with whom I have hitchhiked, climbed and generally wandered for many years) and I should sign up for The Amazing Race. Each time I watched the show with her she would say so at least twice.

If we departed the bus at Boryeong or some other god-forsaken city I do not remember. What I do remember is that we found ourselves walking on a dirt surface amongst the pollution of diesel, a sweltering heat and the chaos of a poorly organized bus stop in some out-post town. We walked, trailing the Brit’s a bit until a Korean lady began yelling and gesturing that we were apparently in the area designated to busses picking up passengers as opposed to the human-only area, full of people trying to get the hell out.

We passed through the divider and were soon bouncing around Koreans under a strong-as-hell early afternoon sun trying at once to get out of the crowd and figure out one: where we were, and two: where we were headed.

Bus stations that go anywhere you actually want to go are generally fairly accessible and well labeled, even if it isn’t in English. This place was not. It was dirty and crawling with locals who had been around long enough to know all they needed to and therefore didn’t care much for the placement of signs to help others.

We stood for a while; our group of Americans here and the Brits off about 20 feet. There was some talk between the two of us as they too seemed to be a little dumbfounded. Passively, they followed us for a little and we them but ultimately it was decided that this place probably wasn’t going to be getting us anywhere we wanted to go.

We wished eachother luck as they hopped in a cab.

We saw them again, 20 minutes later as we waited in another bus station down the way and past a fortress wall perched atop a green hill. This station, thankfully, was labeled enough so that we were soon on a third bus, headed finally to the beach.

On the face of our plans, we anticipated a 2 hour ride from Daejeon that would give us time to relax and then a day at the beach before we made the return journey. Somewhere along hour 4 of our trip to Daecheon Beach, between Tim rocking a hard Texan accent talking about deep-fried butter with Amanda, and a couple of kids who had developed a 2 hour long obsession with Andrew and Amanda C; Amanda C had either the good humor or pleasant sense of sarcasm to say that “hey, at least we’re all together!”

That final bus dragged on forever. We whipped around on the sides of small mountains, on the edges of a lake and through village after village. We passed through town side streets and over highways that divided only one rice-patty from another. We passed even the point at which it was utter denial to think we were going to be spending the same amount of time as we had spent traveling to the beach actually AT the beach.

At some point the bus pulled into a sandy parking lot that housed couple of trailers that served as bathrooms, a convenience store that didn’t sell water, and a ticket counter.

Anyone looking to read about fun at Dacheon Beach will be disappointed to find out that here the bulk of the story ends. All told, we spent around 5 hours trying to get to the place and had now only a few hours to spend beachside before we had to pack on another bus that would take us direct to Daejeon and then home to Cheongju.

The first thing we did was buy beer, water, and snacks. We then proved to be a beach vendor’s good fortune by immediately renting a platform and an umbrella to enjoy what time we had there. We drank our beers and talked and I wandered back and forth looking for some place to change into my bathing suit.

I walked for what seemed like a long time in bare feet towards various buildings I hoped to be a bathroom but had no luck until Andrew and Tim came running up with my heinous flip flops and I found a bathroom in which to change.

Tim and Andrew came back some 45 minutes later (probably a good third of out time at the beach) with a full pizza box and a bottle of Coke (or Pepsi). I have gone on at length here, there, and elsewhere as to the properties of Korean pizza. Never is there real cheese, often there are odd and funky toppings, and always there is corn. This pizza, though, was something special. It proved at once to be one of the brighter points of my day and also the bane of my existence.

It was a cheese pizza. It was topped with sauce and a dump-truck load of cheese. Real cheese. At the time, the amount of cheese on this thing seemed absurd. You could feel its give and snap as you tore off a bite. If I were at home, the thing would probably be lackluster at best; but I was not. As it was, that pizza was the best pizza I have yet to have in Korea.

The water was freakishly warm, something that was quickly blamed on our proximity to China. We were bathing in the luke warm Yellow Sea and I will maintain that it is better to believe that one is swimming in toxic pollution than urine.

Two things happened on the way home. Tim’s wallet never got out of a taxi cab in Daejeon and by the time he noticed (about half a second after he closed the door) the guy was gone. I think things turned out ok, but I don’t imagine it is a good feeling to lose that amount of important objects (money, bank card, Alien Registration Card) all at one go.

The other thing that happened is I all but confirmed my inkling that I might be the slightest bit lactose intolerant by spending an hour trying with all of my might not to crap my pants. The cheese, glorious as it was, turned into napalm somewhere inside of me. I will spare the details but suffice it to say that the pain was excruciating, the sweats were cold, the tremors fierce and at one point my mind had accepted that there was a pretty good chance that I was going to have a worse story to tell than the tomato-barfer.

Beach photo courtesy of Amanda.

What did I eat today? A peanut-butter sandwich and kimchi-fried rice.

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Busan, Finale

 

Morning.

For various reasons, there was a blur between the end of the night before and the morning after. I awoke after not more than a few minutes of dozing in time to see a man and a younger guy putting in the first of what would be hundreds and hundreds of umbrellas. In a few hours Haeundae Beach in Busan would be crawling; our bed would be pretty crowded.

Turns out, it wasn’t our bed. The older of the two umbrella Nazis began shouting at me that we were in his way. We wouldn’t have been in his way for another hour anyway but I smacked Larry in the back and we moved further up.

All things told, there are worse places to be exhausted and hung-over than Haeundae Beach. Granted, my mouth tasted like black death and my skin was covered in grime and sand from the past 6 or so hours- the stink of bad barbeque hung around me in a shroud of regret. Luckily we were right next to a giant bathtub.

The water reminded me of Hampton Beach and Plum Island in that it was freezing almost to the point of ankle numbness but not quite there so it was refreshing.

Here’s something you should know about Haeundae Beach: you can’t swim until 9am. Why? Don’t know, perhaps you die. We were throwing around a tiny football when a lifeguard came running up and told us to get out of the water. Fun time was over. We spent another 15 minutes in pathetic childlike desperation. The beach was empty save for a few runners, the umbrella Gestapo, and Larry and I as we sat at the edge of the water and tossed a miniature nerf-ish football back and forth like 5 year olds who would drown in more than 2 inches of water.

At some point we fell asleep long enough to fry and woke up to take a quick dip and clean off a fraction of the sand that would cling to us until we were back home.

Our motel cost 90,000W. Not a bad price considering where we were. It was more than we were hoping to pay but it was close to the beach and let us check in at 10am so we took it.

Love Motels. These classy establishments of the cheap and fornicating are one of the coolest things about Korea. I don’t remember our hotel name (I remember spending 30 seconds sounding out the Hangul til we figured out that it had something to do with BEACH) but it was surrounded by a wall and curtains so that those who walked in would not be visible to the outside, more decent world.

There is a certain shame in these places despite that they are literally EVERYWHERE. They are generally a hell of a lot cheaper than a tourist hotel (90,000W is actually pretty damn expensive for a love hotel) and can be a hell of a lot nicer. Sure, they might come with a few questionable extras- battery-operated devices, an extra channel or two, a few brochures for a little company- point is love motels make a lot of sense for the budget traveler. Though, according to Lonely Planet, there is a love motel in Busan at which one can rent a sex machine for an hour- that place might warrant the covert entrances.

We lucked out with a measly condom machine in our room. I have stayed in some pretty shady places in my life (cough, Buffalo, uncough) and this, well, it wasn’t one of them. There was a giant TV hanging on the wall, the bathroom was large with a deep-but-broken whirlpool tub. We had a nice view to the ocean above a handful of buildings. Our beds were firm and comfortable despite being covered in sand within seconds. All in all it was a fine place. I collapsed onto my bed and looked up at the thing that was probably going to kill us in the end.

It reminded me of an enormous wagon wheel. It was deep brown and was fixed to the ceiling. The color went with the white ceiling but the thing was monstrous. I had visions of my end- killed by a giant wagon wheel in Korea next to Larry in a room with a condom machine.

The other thing that made me nervous was our fire escape. We were on the ninth floor and our only way out in an emergency was coiled behind some glass next to the window. Our fire escape was a rope. I am scared of heights and if there was a fire I was supposed to throw this NYLON rope out of the window and shimmy down to the ground? C’mon Korea, at least spring for a rope ladder. They might as well have left a Super Soaker 80 in there with a note that said “…sorry”.

Lunch was a disappointment. We stopped at a sit-down Chinese joint and pointed to several menu items that we wanted included in our “lunch special” and got almost none of them. Instead we got a handful of tiny sample dishes of pretty crappy food. The rolls were pretty good though. We should have sgone for the shark fin or the bird’s nest soup, both of which were listed on the menu.

Haeundae Beach looks a lot more socially acceptable in the day. For one thing, there were no obviously drunk sailors or old men from the GEORGE WASHINGTON looking for meat in exchange for cigarettes. The place was swarming with people. It is still strange to see non-Asians with any regularity but a good percentage of people we passed by or pushed through were from the West. The beach was completely covered in umbrellas and people in skimpy bathing suits. Wait, that last part was a lie. It wasn’t until after Larry brought it up that I really noticed, but Koreans aren’t fans of the newest suits with the least amount of material. Nope, Koreans are fans of wearing a full set of clothes, sometimes even an over shirt on top of their T-shirt, when they go swimming. Whatever they were wearing, the place was hopping. Restaurants were overflowing and convenience store patios were full of people enjoying one or several early afternoon drinks.

We walked with the beach to our left on our way to some sort of shore pathway that brought us to an island and back. It was nice. The last time Larry and I had walked together was at the mountain fortress in Cheongju so this was a breeze. A wooden walkway sat atop rocky cliffs and jetties. Below were families drinking Soju and hunting for shellfish or something else. There was no sand for them to sit on, they just perched themselves amongst the rocks.

The path led to somewhere that was pretty unexpected. It led us first to a small lighthouse within sight of a giant bridge, but it then took us to a big modern looking building. It was the APEC building. Just recently there was an APEC meeting held in Vietnam. In 2005 APEC was in Busan, apparently in the building that stood in front of us.

It was a pretty cool place if a little bit dry. It was preserved so that we might feel like we were present at the time. We saw replicas of the meals they ate (plastic kimchi, anyone?) and saw their huge round table and seats labeled with the country of the representative who sat in it. Outside the meeting room we got to see the chairs they sat on as they looked out over the water towards the bridge. Mind you, we weren’t allowed to sit in them. They looked comfortable.



I was looking forward to dinner. Earlier in the day we had walked past a place called Fuzzy Navel. It appeared to be a bar that was packed beyond capacity but I knew (from being pathetic and googling “burritos” and “Busan”) that they allegedly served half decent Mexican food.

We found a spot on the patio and watched as a woman with two yippy but totally obedient dogs walked around. People sat in a tent next to us as a man read their palms and lightning tore the sky off in the distance. We ordered our food and sipped our drinks as we waited. The waiter brought out drinks to us and I, for one, realized that a “lime tap cocktail” was in no way a margarita. It was some dull beer that was loaded with lime flavoring. If mine was bad I felt fortunate that I had not ordered Larry’s Kahlua version.

Finally our food came. Words can’t describe how excited I was. I dug into my beef burrito. It consisted of about a pound of lettuce, refried beans, rice (according to the menu, it wasn’t on my burrito), a few burnt shreds of beef, fake cheese, and sour cream. If I were at home I would have been pissed, but I am not. I was eating genuine sour cream and what was once beef.  All was right with the world.

Larry managed to order the worst burrito on earth. I finished it when he couldn’t eat any more and it consisted of fake cheese and hardening refried-beans. I lucked out on the meal.

Later, we walked for a time with the beach to our right. We passed a K-Pop concert with 8,000W beers, a mural and about a thousand people at a hundred restaurants. We walked until the bustle of the strip gave way to the port. Fishing boats bobbed in a marina as open air shops cleaned their fish tanks. The night darkened with the lack of florescent lighting and the people became less tourist oriented. We walked through a narrow street and finally came to the end of the way and turned around. On a flat spot on the edge of the jagged rocks before the sea sat a family eating a twilight picnic. On our way back we passed small family fish shops where ladies cleaned or cooked their dinner which was presumably very fresh seafood.

Our Busan experience ended with us sitting atop a lifeguard chair drinking a beer while watching the sea as Koreans laughed and drank soju next to us.

At least, that’s how I would like to think it ended. It actually ended with a lifeguard walking up to us and blowing his whistle so that we would get down. “Damn waygooks,” he probably thought. We then went back to the love motel and watched Independence Day and The Ruins and had one last sip of Mongolian vodka. Before we left I ate an authentic bacon-double-cheeseburger from Burgerking and all was right with the world.  Not a bad weekend.

 
What I ate today: jjajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce) and fried chicken.

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Busan, Part I

I spent this past weekend in the southern port of Busan. Larry and I had been planning on heading that way for quite awhile but things hadn’t been working out. Primarily, we were hoping to meet up with my friend Sun Young, with whom I spent days digging in Greece, but she is perpetually on the move or otherwise occupied. This time she was in China. It would have been nice to have somebody with us who 1: spoke the language and 2: knew the city like the back of her hand and could be our tour guide. We decided against postponing because Larry is down to his last few weeks in Korea. We are at the end of the line and he is checking out at the end of intensives.

There was something familiar about our trip to Busan: it reminded me of taking of on an adventure with Brandon. It had this nostalgic feeling despite being basically as far from home as I can get. If I had to put a finger on what kick-started my memory I would have to say is that we had NO PLAN WHATSOEVER.

I talked to Larry in the short breaks between a full schedule. Actually, he had a full schedule; Fridays are a joke on my end. I had three class scheduled and two of them didn’t even show up. I had a total of 30 minutes of classes on Friday.

The furthest along in the planning process we got was that I bought tickets for a KTX train leaving Daejeon, the next city over, at 10:45pm. We would arrive in Busan at about 1:45am. From there we had no idea what we would do. We barely got tickets as Busan is a pretty popular beach destination and figured it would be catastrophic to pay for a motel for two weekend nights. In which case the sensible thing to do is obviously to spend the night in a bar. Problem solved. Done. Worry about the rest after the hangover.

I spent 4,000W on a cab to the Cheongju bus terminal and 3,000W on a bus only to have it stop directly in front of my apartment in Gaesin-dong (my neighborhood). On the plus-side I had Popey’s. The first time I ever had Popey’s in my life was in Cheongju, Republic of Korea. Cool, I know.

From there Daejeon was about 45 minutes with a decent amount of local stops and traffic thrown in for good measure. I had a vested interest in this bus ride as two of my best friends have taken a contract in Daejeon so it is a trip I am expecting to make frequently. It was not bad at all and the way was scenic with the constantly-present mountains raising a bit more dramatically. What is more is that every now and again lightning tore through the black sky and vivid and often repeated flashes. I enjoyed the ride.

Another cab took me from the Daejeon bus terminal to the KTX station. Not too long ago Korea joined the handful of countries with ultra-high speed trains. The KTX has managed to shrink an already tiny country into a more convenient, bite-sized portion. The KTX runs from Seoul in the northern reaches to Busan in the very south with various outward stretches here and there. It’s top speed is 220 mph.

We got lucky with our train. It stopped only once or twice instead the handful of ordinary stops and brought us to Busan in the 2 hours it promised. We were unlucky in that we had to sit backwards the entire way. It is unsettling and a bit disorientating to travel 200 something miles-per-hour backwards in the dark. Further, we had to watch a little Thomas the Tank Engine type show that featured an animated KTX constantly being attacked by an angry train that often sent the KTX flying off the tracks and into the air. It was a pretty stupid thing to show.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea. It is the largest and most active port in the area and makes an attempt to be the vacation destination of the mainland. We figured that our best bet was to head to happening Haeundae beach; but not before we took a stroll down Texas Street.

We came across Texas Street accidentally. We chose to walk to the right and that’s where the street was. Texas Street, according to guidebooks, was a pretty good place to avoid at night. While it certainly had an appropriately seafaring level of seediness to it, it didn’t seem to warrant a “don’t go” label. The first thing we saw was a banner hanging that said “Welcome U.S. Navy!”

Larry and I picked a funny time to go to Busan. Somewhere, not too far away was the GEORGE WASHINGTON, a nuclear powered air-craft carrier that is currently serving as flagship while the combined forces of the U.S. and South Korea stomp their feet and make other very loud noises to show North Korea what’s what. Busan was crawling with U.S. Military.

For a time we walked with the Shore-leave “police” unit assigned to haul in the too-far-gone and misbehaving sailors on Texas Street. In a few hours that would probably be every sailor on the street, but at this point it all seemed pretty festive. There were Russian restaurants and bars with open doors. Signs written in Cyrillic hung here and there. Clubs pulsed to beckon the waterlogged and Russian whores stood by the doors. Definitely worth a walk through and it didn’t seem to be as far gone as Itaewon.

A taxi took us from Texas Street to Haeundae Beach. We were a lot further than we thought we were. Haeundae Beach was still hot and busy at 2am. Sailors and Koreans walked every which way, from bar to beach and back with a steady flow of booze.

We didn’t spend the night in a bar. Instead we classed it up by walking around the beach, dipping our feet in the freezing water and then spending the night drinking and laughing outside of a convenience store. At one point while we dangled our feet over a sea wall two Korean guys came up and asked if we had accomodations and seemed to be asking if they could stay with us. We replied that our accomodations were the beach and a bottle of horrid Mongolian vodka. Soon after, or during, an older Korean guy joined us and barraged us with drunken Korean and promptly ripped a fart and then we left.

We managed to stay awake until 6am, when we skulked into a BBQ restaurant in search of charred meat. A few minutes before we came across an old guy from the U.S. who was crossing the street with a pack of cigarettes. He told us that he had come from the GEORGE WASHINGTON and was also in search of meat.

“I just bought this Korean guy some cigarettes,” he said, “so hopefully that’ll work.” He then offered to buy us a drink or two with the rising sun but I got the impression we were both looking for different kinds of meat. We wished him luck and he to us and we parted.

The BBQ was horrible. Most likely, the older Korean women had served one too many drunk U.S. sailors and wasn’t too happy to see us walk in at dawn. The meat was pretty terrible and most of the food was tossed onto the table without so much as a smile. Scratch that, they were pretty openly pissed off at us for being there.

Bill paid, we found our way to the cool sand of Haeundae beach and built a couple of sand pillows and tried to sleep. Larry, was successful and was unconscious in seconds. I, on the other hand, have been having a lot of trouble sleeping on my bed, let alone on the sand. Ordinarily this would have resulted in me laying around irritated and grumpy. This time, though, I was rewarded with one of the funniest experiences of my life.

I saw the beach combers, 20 or so people dressed in orange with garbage pickers and little nets to clean the sand for the masses that would soon come, about a fifth of a mile away. I should have nudged Larry so that we might get out of their way or otherwise NOT look like a couple of foreigners sleeping in their clothes on a beach with no tent or sleeping bag- kind of gives off a bad impression. Instead, I said nothing pray Larry would not wake up and took out my camera.

It was everything I could have imagine. Larry laid like a little child as Koreans walked by and picked up the garbage that laid around us. They looked at us and gave us (me) a few laughs as I sat there taking photos and laughing in hysterics. One of them even had the amazing idea to pick up Larry’s glasses with her picker.

Alas, eventually they left and I had nothing to do but lay there and look out into the sea as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.  I guess it's not such a bad place to have insomnia...

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